And where did that money go? Nobody burned it. It wasn't annihilated by anti-money. It went to investors who now have more money to invest.
My point is that all of us have more "stuff" than we need or even know what to do with. If there weren't companies making money by selling that unneeded stuff, then their employees would be out of a job.
Easy credit is the catalyst of a good economy.
Your problem is that you believe that what is good for an individual is good for the whole economy. That's not true at all.
As I said above, some individuals can't handle easy credit, like some can't handle their alcohol. They need help. But the rest of us don't.
As for Apple, they weren't the company that ignited the computer revolution. Microsoft did that by starting a computer culture of perhaps hundreds of thousands of companies, each one building a piece of the puzzle that would have been utterly impossible for any single organization. And many of those companies, I'm sure, were started on the credit card of an entrepreneur that didn't have the years to wait to save the money required, because the market was moving too fast.
Sorry, Easy Credit for everyone for anything is NOT a catalyst for a good economy... this is a complete myth.
While yes, access to capital is completely neccessary to build economic activity, from a business perspective, its an abject lie to then say that extending that availability to everyone for everything is good for the economy.
When you pay a finance company or bank 20% interest on your purchase.. that money (2 to 3 times the cost of your item) is no longer available to you to buy other things, regardless of wht they are.
Yes the finance company or bank has the money, and they can use it, but their use of it, is going to be far far more narrow than what the hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals are going to do with it.
What this actually winds up doing is restricting money, to only a preset groups. Yes the total cash out there is the same, but the folks its available to for business or actual economic expansion is far more restrictive.
Yes, Mr. Bank will give a credit card, car loan or mortgage to anyone fogging a mirror these days, but they won't give it to Mr. Budding Business Man, wanting to start his own company.... Now this mans idea may creat hundreds of thousands of jobs, and create billions in wealth, but Mr. Banker isn't going to touch it, because he doesn't see it. So, Mr Budding, goes to his friends and relatives (who funded many a new business in the past), and finds his friends and relatives, while they believe in his vision, have no cash, because they have no savings, because they are paying 20% interest on everything they have bought in the last 30 years.
The idea that DEBT CONSUMPTION is a requirement for a good economy is absolutely, positively abject junk. The strongest and fastest growing economies per capita, are not in nations where folks carry huge personal debts for consumption. That's a lie, and its disingenuous and completely dishonest, and immorral as well, to suggest debt consumption is neccessary for strong capitalist economies... NOTHING could be further from the truth.
You just fundamentally can't grasp, that when folks have their own money, and lots of it, working for them, and letting them reap the benefits of compound interest, instead of being slaves to it, they will buy more stuff, more often than anyone can possibly buy on credit.